Apr. 11, 2017 -Last month customs officials in Singapore intercepted more than 60 bags containing nearly 1,800 pieces of smuggled elephant ivory. To help shed more light on the crimes, they placed a call to American conservation biologist Samuel Wasser.

Wasser is a scientist, but also a bit of a detective. Using techniques he has spent decades perfecting, Wasser can extract DNA from any elephant tusk, allowing him to identify almost exactly where the animal was killed by poachers. “I can take a tusk and I can pinpoint where it came from within three kilometers — and sometimes to the very park,” he says.

Apr. 10, 2017 -Furry, button-nosed and dependent on sea ice for their survival, polar bears have long been poster animals for climate change.

But at a time when established climate science is being questioned at the highest levels of government, climate denialists are turning the charismatic bears to their own uses, capitalizing on their symbolic heft to spread doubts about the threat of global warming.

VILCHES, Spain, Mar. 31, 2018 -The Iberian lynx is a picky eater. Despite its agility and speed, it almost only chases rabbits.

This narrow choice of prey helps explain why this feline came close to extinction less than two decades ago, after disease wiped out large numbers of rabbits from the Iberian Peninsula. But a vast breeding and relocation program has now turned the lynx into a flagship example of Europe’s efforts to maintain its biodiversity.

Mar. 1, 2018 -Sudan is a 45-year-old northern white rhinoceros – and the last male of his kind. He’s suffering from poor health, and if he dies before he is able to mate it will likely signal the effective extinction of the northern white rhino, a subspecies that was driven to its current crisis by poaching. “We are very concerned about him — he’s extremely old for a rhino and we do not want him to suffer unnecessarily,” said the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where Sudan and two female white rhinos Najin and Fatu live.

Feb. 12, 2018 -A suspected poacher was mauled to death and eaten by a pride of lions outside of South Africa's famed Kruger National Park, according to media reports.

The victim's remains were found over the weekend at a private game park near Hoedspruit in the province of Limpopo. The lions ate most of the body but left the head behind. A loaded hunting rifle was also found nearby.

"It seems the victim was poaching in the game park when he was attacked and killed by lions. They ate his body, nearly all of it, and just left his head and some remains," Limpopo police spokesman Moatshe Ngoepe said in a statement.

Nov.17, 2017 - So what are you gonna do?

President Trump on Friday reversed the government’s decision to start allowing hunters to import trophies of elephants that were killed in two African countries, pending a further review.

His evening Twitter message reversed a decision by his own administration over Zimbabwe that was announced this week and promoted as recently as Friday afternoon by the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sept. 20, 2017 - On this planet, so many plants and animals are disappearing that scientists worry we’re experiencing a sixth mass extinction. Many of these organisms are taking hits from a variety of angles — habitat loss, climate change and more — that it’s hard to get a grasp on how to stop their declines. Conservation success stories are rare.

But sea turtles may be an exception, according to an comprehensive analysis of global sea turtle abundance published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Sept 16, 2017 - They’re the color of mud, and they can grow up to two feet long. People call them snot otters because they’re covered in a layer of slippery mucus. Or lasagna lizards because they have a crinkly flap of skin on their sides that helps them absorb oxygen (and resembles a lasagna noodle).

Eastern hellbenders live throughout the Appalachian region in the United States. Their ancestors have been on earth for around 160 million years, but in the last several decades their numbers have dropped dangerously in several states, primarily due to habitat destruction. Eastern hellbenders are endangered in Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana.

August 23, 2017 - The whale shark is the biggest fish and shark in the world. These gentle marine giants roam the oceans around the globe, generally alone. However, large numbers of whale sharks often gather in areas with abundant plankton food—making them prime tourist attractions. Its enormous mouth (nearly five feet wide) engulfs large quantities of tiny plankton that it filters through its gills as it swims.

August 17, 2017 - At a facility located on the edges of Nairobi National Park, a small crowd of smiling people stands quietly. Adults and children from countries around the world line up along a rope that surrounds a large area of red dirt. Within the paddock are puddles of water, hills of soft russet soil, newly cut branches thick with green leaves, and a large wheelbarrow filled with oversized milk bottles. The play area at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust baby elephant nursery is ready for the youngsters that brought so many people here.

August 17, 2017 - Up to 20 grizzly bears could be hunted in 2017 based on 2016 population estimates and acceptable federally set mortality limits. Trophy hunting is highly unlikely in 2017 because the three states bordering Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks intend to hold public hearings before hunting rules are finalized.

Aug. 15, 2017 - Some Florida fishermen are purposefully flouting laws and reeling in endangered sharks, an important new paper reveals.

The illegal activities were uncovered by shark researcher David Shiffman, who studied postings on the online message boards of the South Florida Shark Club, the largest club in the state for fishermen who practice from piers or beaches. Shiffman examined more than 1,250 posts by these land-based anglers and found evidence of people knowingly catching protected species such as lemon sharks (Negaprion breivirostris), sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus), tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), and three hammerhead shark species (Sphyrna lewini, S. mokarran, and S. zygaea). At least 389 sharks were illegally caught, according to his analysis.

Aug. 15, 2017 - For five straight months, Sheila Holmes slipped through the Madagascar rainforest, 16,000 kilometres away from her Calgary university classes, eyes and feet following black-and-white ruffed lemurs as they flew through the trees.

She's now working on her anthropology doctorate, became a crucial part of what is the longest continuous monitoring program of one of the most endangered primate species in the world.

July 31, 2017- On MAY 3, 2017, a newborn male bison entered the world on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, a historic event signaling the rebirth of an iconic species on these tribal lands—and of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho people who share them.

July 31, 2017 - The aardvark, a highlight for anyone on a game-viewing African safari, will become increasingly rare as the world warms and dries, and the consequences go well beyond a decline in aardvark safari encounters.

Added July 29, 2017 - Wildlife, including endangered species, are killed illegally, smuggled and sold for billions of dollars each year.

Founded by a crime scene investigator, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, uses state-of-the-art technology (as well as flesh-eating beetles). Meet some of the forensics experts at "the only full service crime lab for wildlife in the world."

July 27, 2017 - How can we eat well without harming wildlife? One simple step we can all take right now that would have a far greater impact than any other (aside from having fewer children): Cut out the grain-fed beef.

The inefficiency of feeding livestock grain to turn them into meals for humans makes a diet heavy in animals particularly harsh on the Earth’s resources. For example, in the United States, it takes 25 kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of beef. Pigs have a grain-to-meat-ratio of 9:1, and chickens are 3:1.

Previous Next The National Wildlife Property Repository (NWPR) is a 22,000 square foot office and warehouse located northeast of Denver, Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. The facility is responsible for receiving wildlife items that have been forfeited or abandoned to the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service.

In accordance with the law, these items are stored in a secure environment, and many of the items are donated to educational facilities, nonprofit organizations, and conservation agencies to aid in teaching about endangered species and other wildlife. Others items are sent to scientific institutions to be used in research to develop better identification methods to protect wildlife.

July 21, 2017 - Captain Oona Layolle is the campaign leader for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s Milagro III mission, which just returned from the Gulf of California after a six-month effort to save the critically endangered vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus) from extinction.

The most important part of their mission — a partnership with the Mexican government — involved finding and removing illegal gillnets set by fishermen to capture another local species, the totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi), whose swim bladders that sell for thousands of dollars a pound to Chinese investors. The indiscriminate gillnets, set and anchored into place, capture and kill totoaba, vaquita and everything else that crosses their paths.

July 12, 2017 - The Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana is home to some of North America’s highest concentrations of wildlife. From the beloved Louisiana black bear to Louisiana’s answer to the flamingo, the roseate spoonbill, the state is home to an exciting array of wildlife. But the important wetland habitat for these and other creatures is in trouble.

Sadly, the coastline is disappearing at a rate of one football field every hour. But all is not lost.

July 12, 2017 - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it will review whether Florida panthers are still an endangered species.

The review, which is required every 5 years under the Endangered Species Act, comes amid growing calls from hunters and ranchers to take the big cats off the endangered species list in response to population growth.

Though the population has increased from perilously low numbers due to the protections provided by the Endangered Species Act, its numbers and distribution are still far too limited to secure the Florida panther from extinction.

July 12, 2017 - The shattering blasts come every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, for weeks on end. The Trump Administration wants to allow the use of seismic airgun blasting to map the ocean floor from Florida to Delaware in the search for oil and gas.

Recent testimony by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke at House Natural Resources Committee has made it clear that seismic testing in the eastern Gulf of Mexico will follow next.

June 12, 2017 - On her first visit to the Republic of Chad in 1995, Stephanie Vergniault fell in love with the country’s elephants. Plentiful and easy to see at the time, they gave her a sense of freedom and peace.

That was before the elephant poaching crisis began. By 2007, the elephant numbers had plummeted — from 20,000 in the mid-1990s to roughly 4,000 that year. Today only about 1,200 remain in Chad.

May 31, 2017 - oaching, illegal fishing and deforestation are threatening more than quarter of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, according to a report by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) — and the consequences are not just environmental.

May 31, 2017 - Despite the Pacific fisher’s high vulnerability to extinction, this little-known mammal has yet to receive federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. In the absence of this type of government regulation, an uneasy collaboration among scientists, conservation organizations, and the timber industry has filled in to take its place.

For now, these efforts offer hope for the Pacific fisher — but without endangered species status, there are no assurances that current protections will continue into the future.

May 22, 2017 - After decades of leading high-paying clients into the African wild to hunt elephants, leopards and other large game, professional hunter Theunis Botha encountered a situation last week that he could not shoot his way out of.

The 51-year-old was leading a trophy hunt safari in Gwai, Zimbabwe, when the group unexpectedly came across a breeding herd of elephants. According to an anonymous source with the party, chaos swiftly ensued.

May, 2017 - Utilizing state-of-the-art equipment, Oscar®-winner Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a team of artists and activists intent on showing the world never-before-seen images that expose issues of endangered species and mass extinction.

May 17, 2017- Elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory. A fungus is wiping out the world’s frogs. Ring-tailed lemurs have all but vanished into the illegal pet and meat trades. Creatures big and small are going extinct, and here in the United States the Endangered Species Act itself is constantly at risk of landing on the chopping block.

It’s a bleak world in many ways — but is doom and gloom the only possible response?

Quite frankly, no. As a jurnalist who has spent the past 10 years reporting on the extinction crisis, John Platt finds that the very people who are helping to save endangered species are often the ones who know the best reasons to stay optimistic.

May 17, 2017 - Whooping cranes (Grus americana) famously barely escaped extinction during the 20th century. After decades of habitat loss and unrestricted hunting, their population had crashed to just 15 birds in 1941.

Today, thanks to intense captive-breeding programs and the protection of the Endangered Species Act, that number has soared to approximately 500 wild birds. Their seven-foot wingspans are once again visible in the sky as they migrate between their summer breeding grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and their wintering grounds in the southern United States.

May 12, 2017 - A comparison of conditions in the outback on either side of Australia’s dingo fence has revealed that extermination of these apex predators affects not only the abundance of other animals and plants, but also reduces the quality of the soil.

May 8, 2017 - Ten years ago, beekeepers in the United States raised the alarm that thousands of their hives were mysteriously empty of bees.

What followed was global concern over a new phenomenon: colony collapse disorder.

Since then we have realised that it was not just the US that was losing its honey bees; similar problems have manifested all over the world.

May 1, 2017 - You recognize monarch butterflies — with their large, distinctively patterned orange, black and white wings, monarchs are iconic across North America for their far-ranging multi-generational migration. But the population of these colorful creatures has plummeted by 75 percent or more since the 1990s.

Now, government agencies and local nonprofits are teaming up to restore feeding and breeding habitat for the monarchs as they make their way through southern Oregon each year.

Apr. 11, 2017 - Fishery managers with the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted Tuesday for a total closure of ocean salmon seasons from southern Oregon to northern California.

Commercial troll fishing seasons will be closed from Florence, Oregon, to Horse Mountain, which is south of Eureka, California. Sport fishing seasons will be closed from Humbug Mountain south of Port Orford, Oregon, to Horse Mountain in northern California. The rest of the coast will have limited fishing seasons.

Apr. 6, 2017 -The National Parks Service is celebrating the birth of a new mountain lion kitten born in the Santa Monica Mountains. But while the tiny, blue-eyed cougar is good news, she's also a sign of trouble. P-53, as the kitten has been dubbed, is the daughter of the female P-23, and the father is most likely the female's half-brother, P-30.